Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

CarlKenner Wrote:I thought your timing with dropping D3D9 was terrible in that regard.

D3D9 was dropped shortly after 4.0. (4.0-155 for reference).

Someday all applications, games and operating systems will be 64-bit only. Someday x86/x86-64 might be dropped for something better or for real 64-bit or 128-bit lol, I remember the hype back when Dreamcast was released because it was apparently the first 128-bit system. Too bad life is too short and I won't be able to witness all the technological advancements in society. Maybe in my lifetime someone will figure a way to significantly increase the human life span or suppress the aging process lol.

Are there better performing architectures than x86/x86-64 because I'm itching to know how Dolphin would perform on those if fully ported over.

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(05-22-2014, 03:19 PM)Shonumi Wrote: [ -> ]

CarlKenner Wrote:I thought your timing with dropping D3D9 was terrible in that regard.

D3D9 was dropped shortly after 4.0. (4.0-155 for reference).

I think he meant prior to 4.0 with builds as of 4.0 and after dropping major features that would break compatibility with older hardware and operating systems. The fact of the matter is there would still be those that would complain regardless but they would be the minority since the majority of all users have moved to 64-bit and modern operating systems. If there are improvements to be had dropping features, hacks, apis, outdated tech then all is good imho. No one should be trying to run the emulator and play games with inadequate hardware, 32-bit and DX9 are outdated tech now that was likely holding back development. Continuing to support DX9 alone was holding back development and some issues could never be fixed or fixed properly with DX9.

Alpha was the king of the 90s, but HP killed it in favor of Itanium (great decision in hindsight /s). The days of big RISC CPUs are over (unless IBM's Hail Mary with OpenPOWER scores a touchdown) so if you can't use GPGPU its Intel or GTFO.

@X2DM - CarlKenner specifically said he thought we should drop major features after a major release, and I pointed out that D3D9 was dropped after a major release (and relatively soon I might add), not builds leading up to a major release or the major release itself. The second case would be "worse", since the first allows D3D9 to at least be supported in the latest stable version (4.0.2). If we dropped it before then, people that want to use it (be their reasons stubborn or otherwise) would effectively have been cut off from forum support. At the very least, giving people D3D9 in the stable release was a "nice" gesture before promptly removing it to improve the emulator overall. Since D3D9 was going to be eliminated eventually, supporting it in 4.0.2 gives users a chance to wean themselves off it until the next stable build arrives, rather than having eliminated it in in Dolphin 3.5-23XX and having support suddenly vanish altogether within a few weeks.

The reason the 32-bit drop was so sudden is that it's blocking features which would make Dolphin so much better. Those features are being worked on now that it's been dropped.

(05-28-2014, 12:53 PM)JMC47 Wrote: [ -> ]The reason the 32-bit drop was so sudden is that it's blocking features which would make Dolphin so much better. Those features are being worked on now that it's been dropped.

What was it blocking?

Updates to the JIT (Just in Time Compiler) that 32-bit literally cannot do. This will make the emulator's core faster.

They could of made 32bit builds interpreter only.

Then everyone would've complained about bad performance.

(05-28-2014, 02:02 PM)lamedude Wrote: [ -> ]They could of made 32bit builds interpreter only.

32 bit is still supported in this sense, but we don't provide any builds for it.